New Orleans Jazz

Every so often life hands you a travel gift. Something unexpected or completely unplanned or relatively inexpensive but always way, way too tempting to pass up for some reason. Maybe it's a destination wedding. Or a family member (or a friend) springs for a vacay. Or it could be a work trip either for a project or client or just a conference or something (and yes, work trips can have some fun tacked on every now and then). Whatever it may be, it's a bonus surprise. And you take it gladly.

Why start this post the way I did? Well, obviously because this year I got one of those unexpected surprises. And yes, it was a work trip. New Orleans. Late April and early May. But it wasn't MY work trip. It was my wife's. And this is the kind of work travel I can get into. No happy hours with colleagues or clients. No late dinners with your boss or bosses. Just get your work done remote (because I did log 8 hours each day) in the hotel and quit right on time and start exploring. And New Orleans is a place worth some exploring. 

Now, my wife did tell me before we left that she wasn't going to be able to pay attention to me during the day or even after hours on a couple of nights. I think I'm good, honey. I'm going to a bar and drinking some beer and listening to some music. And if it's the Big Easy, that music is jazz. Let's explore!

So I know what you might be thinking...isn't jazz dead? Or at least on life support? Well, without getting too Timotheé Chalamet about something...maybe. But not everywhere. Not in New York certainly, where you can visit a different world-class jazz club every night of the week. And definitely, defintiely not in New Orleans. Alive and well doesn't come close to describing the status jazz in the Big Easy. Thriving would be better.

Most people regard New Orleans as the birthplace of jazz. It's a tricky thing to ascribe the origin of any particular art form to a specific time and place but in the late 1800s and early 1900s, a style of music emerged in the Crescent City that borrowed from African, Creole, Caribbean and various European music forms. This new type of music based in rhythm and syncopation with improvisation as a key component of its character borrowed heavily from southern blues, ragtime and African call and response music. It was unique. And it worked. It stuck!

New Orleans was likely the only place on the planet where this sort of music could develop. We often think of the United States as a melting pot but that's not really true in most places. We are a heavily segregated society even today, let alone in the late 1800s. But New Orleans was an exception. Its status as a port town on the Gulf of Mexico combined with its relatively loose attitude toward separation of races brought cultural influences, instruments and people together who wouldn't normally have any opportunity to intermingle. And out of all that came jazz.

Let's not get too confused about this subject. Jazz today and over the last century is and has been complex. It has spread across the country and the world and has been interpreted and added to and mutated in ways very different from what was created in the Big Easy 120 plus years ago. Big band swing, jazz manouche, be bop, hard bop and all sorts of other forms of jazz were created in places other than Louisiana. But it all got started in New Orleans. And it is very alive there today.

I am not a huge jazz guy. But my dad is (or was) and there is a legacy of jazz in my family that is passed down from my him to me. Now, truthfully, I've been a reluctant adopter of jazz in my life. While there have been times before my 50s that I engaged with this form of music in a couple of visits to New Orleans and the odd CD purchase over the years, it was really relatively recently that I could actually sit down at home and listen to a whole jazz album and enjoy it. And ironically, it was when my dad started losing interest in everything (including jazz) that I adopted part of his collection and consciously started listening to this / his music. 

I've documented more of my relationship with this kind of music and my dad in a prior post. I won't re-hash that same thing here. But suffice it to say, I felt much more prepared to like or love the music I would be hearing in New Orleans in 2026 that on prior trips. I also wanted to explore some New Orleans jazz history on this trip, rather than just camping out in some club every night I was in town. I wanted to connect the dots of history around this music.

If there's a place to start exploring the history of jazz in New Orleans, it's at the New Orleans Jazz Museum near the Mississippi River at the west end of the French Quarter. Now truth be told, I didn't start my 2026 jazz voyage here. I planned to make my way to the Museum on Saturday morning and I'd been in New Orleans since Tuesday night and there was no way I was letting all those nights in town pass without hearing some live music. So Saturday it was, with two shows under my belt already.

The New Orleans Jazz Museum is in the old United States Mint and it shares the building's exhibit space with displays and information about the Mint itself. It's not an hours long experience. I read about every word in the place and it took me a bit more than an hour or so. And sure, it included all the stuff that I wrote above about New Orleans being the perfect place for different muscical forms to collide and emerge as early jazz.

But it also told an older story about the origin of jazz in the Crescent City. One that I didn't fully understand until I got to the Museum. And like some tales like this, the uniqueness of New Orleans as a site for jazz to begin is in some part rooted in laws and rules that ultimately make little sense. But they led to something magical.

The economy of French colonial Louisiana, like every other place in the southeastern part of what is now the United States, depended on slave labor, African people torn away from their homes and families and involuntarily transported to the United States to be forced to work against their will (that is, if they even survived the journey). But unlike the American southern states at that time, French colonial Louisiana prohibited slaves working on Sundays and holidays. And for some reason, slave owners allowed their slaves to leave their properties on these days and congregate together. One of the places where they did that was Congo Square, where enslaved African peoples (among other things) created music. This was the first root of jazz in New Orleans. And it started as early as the 1780s, about 100 years before the generally acknowledged emergence of jazz.

Congo Square, Louis Armstrong Park, New Orleans.

If I got nothing else out of the Jazz Museum, understanding the historical connection to Congo Square was important, particularly because that was my first stop after the Museum. But being in a museum about jazz in New Orleans is only going to get you so far. There is a display with the following text on the first floor of the Museum. 

The jazz that you hear in...the clubs all over New Orleans may feature musicians of the present but it shares the syncopated rhythms, blues patterns, improvisatory prowess, spiritual depth, and breathtaking technique that echo more than a century of music in the Crescent City. These artists connect the jazz they play to their lives and the current world, just as Bolden and Jelly Roll did in their era. The best way to appreciate and honor the luminaries of the past is to seek out and patronize today's virtuosos as they continue playing and developing this music. Jazz is a living and changing art, and it thrives both within and right outside these doors.

Well said. Time to hit some clubs. Let's start with Preservation Hall, which is not where I actually started listening to live music on this trip. But from a narrative perspective, Preservation Hall is a good place to start.

It seems to me that there is a need to keep the history of jazz from a performance standpoint front and center in New Orleans. I mean this is where it started, after all. And I assume others feel that same way and that's why Preservation Hall exists. The place was founded as a performance hall in 1961 and has been carrying the torch for traditional, New Orleans jazz ever since. It's a dusty, grimy-looking, basic building on St. Peter Street in the French Quarter which hosts multiple performances of jazz on a nightly basis. 

The line outside Preservation Hall.

If you want to hear musicians every night that push the edge of their craft and are that making music that is breaking ground or super creative, Preservation Hall is not likely the place to do that. The music presented to us the night I visited was not current and I imagine most shows in that building are the same way. We heard music created by or played by (or both) Duke Ellington, Al Hirt, Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Benny Goodman and others. None of those men in the prior sentence were either born less than 100 years ago or were alive in the 21st century. It’s sort of an oldies show, with the exception of Caroline Brunious’ original composition called Spooky.

Don’t misunderstand me, there’s nothing wrong with skilled musicians playing timeless classics. The 45 minute long experience is essential New Orleans and it was enjoyable. The whole mission of Preservation Hall is historical and deliberately created just that way, right down to the building where the musicians play. I mean there is no reason for Preservation Hall to look as old and run down as it looks. And it’s really not old and run down, it’s just made to look that way. It’s part of the act. It’s a stage set. Or a museum, if you prefer. And there’s a lot of value in preserving New Orleans’ history and presenting it to audiences every night.  

I had visited Preservation Hall on my first trip to New Orleans, which I would put at about 14 years ago (going from memory). I think going once a decade and a half is about the right pace. I assume the show here is going to be basically the same every night. It has its place and it's super valuable as a preserver of tradition.

Wendell Brunious at Preservation Hall talking to the audience at the end of the show.

We were in town in New Orleans this year for five nights, including the first night when we got to the hotel at about 8 or 9 p.m. I heard and saw live music on three of the five (but really four) nights. I thought that was pretty good. Preservation Hall was the only show I saw in the French Quarter. The best jazz in the city can be found elsewhere.

My intent on this trip was to make this a true New Orleans music week / weekend. I fully intended to find a New Orleans piano show and hear some zydeco to go with my Preservation Hall pilgrimage. If you didn't know it, the Crescent City has a long tradition of piano jazz. From Jelly Roll Morton to Alain Toussaint to Fats Domino to Professor Longhair to Dr. John to James Booker to Harry Connick, Jr. And I was set up to a solo piano show at the Maple Leaf Bar on Thursday night, the very place where James Booker used to be the house pianist. In fact the piano series on Thursday nights at the Maple Leaf is named in Booker's honor.

So Preservation Hall on Wednesday, Maple Leaf Bar on Thursday and I did manage to find a zydeco show at dba New Orleans on Frenchmen Street just east of the French Quarter. And not just some zydeco show...Rockin' Dopsie Jr. (somehow pronounced Doopsie) and the Zydeco Twisters on Saturday night. This is the same band (minus Dopsie Jr.'s father) that played on Paul Simon's Graceland album and a connection back to the legendary Clifton Chenier (and the King of the Bayou).

Zydeco by the way is an accordion-based music invented by French-speaking black Creoles in Louisiana and it hasn't really spread much further than its point of origin. In addition to the accordion as the main instrument in the band, it is not uncommon for someone on stage to be wearing a washboard on his or her chest which is played with spoons or some other metal device.

My music agenda was all set up.

And then I strayed.

Rockin' Dopsie Jr. and the Zydeco Twisters. dba New Orleans.

Before the Maple Leaf announced the Wednesday James Booker-themed show the week I was there, they posted an electric organ show on their schedule page on Thursday night. And it is about impossible for me to resist an electric organ as the centerpiece of a show. Look, we all have our vices and weaknesses in life. Electric organ is one of mine. So I faltered, turned my back on the piano show and bought a ticket for Wednesday instead of Thursday (which pushed Preservation Hall to Thursday). I like what I like.

Most music clubs in New Orleans are small and have about zero seats. Maybe they have some benches on the side of the main hall, which is sometimes little wider than a large corridor. I'm not talking about seated jazz clubs that serve dinner. I mean straight ahead music venues.

Both Maple Leaf Bar and dba fit this mold. They pack as many paying customers as possible into the place for a show who all eventually at some point make their way as close to the stage as absolutely possible. It's electric and it's loud and it's fun to be that close to the band making this incredible music. That is until it gets really hot from being in a mob of people really close to you in a place that can't actually have adequate ventilation for that situation. And inevitably either someone taller than you ends up standing directly in front of you or someone whose personal assessment of their ability to dance does the same thing as the taller person mentioned earlier in this sentence.

I'm not really complaining here (although it could easily be interpreted that way) but the dude who started out to my right at Maple Leaf but ended up with the back of his head about 12 inches from my face before he started bopping his head and shoulders back and forth and the women who both jumped right in front of me at dba and who both stepped on my foot (which hadn't moved) while "dancing", give me some personal space please. I lasted 45 minutes to an hour at the front of each show before retreating to the back. It was cooler in the back.

Joe Ashlar (organ) and Stanton Moore (drums), Maple Leaf Bar.

Both shows were fantastic. I'd go back and see either of these two bands perform any day. Could I complain about the covers a little bit? Sure I could. I didn't really need to hear Chris Stapleton's Tennessee Whiskey at the Rockin' Dopsie, Jr. show. I was there to hear original music from musicians trying to create music that is serious and which honors musical traditions created in New Orleans and elsewhere. The covers at both shows were mostly just a distraction from what I really wanted to hear. There was plenty of original music and I heard enough of what I wanted to go home happy both nights.

Was it jazz? I don't know. Neither show likely fits strict definitions of what jazz is to most people. I would think most people would be looking for some horns when they think jazz and there were none of these at least in the organ show that Joe Ashlar and Stanton Moore (with guests) at the Maple Leaf. But both shows had music with syncopated rhythms, blues patterns, improvisatory prowess, spirtual depth and breathtaking technique which is what the New Orleans Jazz Museum said makes up jazz. And for real, free-soloing around a consistent beat and rhythm was the foundation of both shows (except maybe for the Tennessee Whiskey cover).

And if you need any further proof on the Maple Leaf show being jazz, Stanton Moore's picture is actually in the New Orleans Jazz Museum.

Pictures of James Booker at the Maple Leaf Bar. Booker was a New Orleans original.

The first two times I visited New Orleans, I winged it with the music a little bit to a lot bit. I expected that I would be able to hear what I regarded as jazz (and, yes, I likely would have described it as something with horns) anywhere I turned. If there is any doubt about me winging it, let me say that on both prior trips I looked for some good jazz on Bourbon Street (apologies a little to Fritzel's for making that statement). Who seriously does that? I came away in 2012 and 2015, feeling that my New Orleans musical experience was lacking despite stumbling onto a pretty good blues show on Frenchmen Street the first time I was in town.

This time I did it right. I did a little bit of research on where to find the best music, checked out the artists on Youtube where I could to get excited about some and reject others and then made sure I had some tickets in advance of the shows. Does that kill the spontaneity a bit? Sure it does. But I wanted some music this time that aligned with what I love. And if I needed spontaneity, I had Friday night open for that if my first two nights turned out to be failures. I didn't go to a show on Friday.

Honestly, where else in the United States are you really going to be able to find this amount of music on any given week of the year and come away satisfied with three different shows? New Orleans' music scene truly is a national treasure, particularly for a city of its size. I could easily make an argument that New York City can offer the same sort of variety and quality but the population of Manhattan alone is five times the size of New Orleans. This much music in a small city is worth traveling to see and hear.

I didn't have New Orleans on my radar for 2026 so it was great that it worked out successfully. We concert-go here at home the entire calendar year when bands and artists that we love come into the DC area. We likely make it to 8-12 shows a year, which i know is not a huge number but it's a lot more than a lot of other people I know (not judging, just saying...). This trip to the Big Easy flipped my concert experience on its head. For four nights, I had to discover something that I liked over some dates that I had no control over selecting. It's a testament to the quality of music in New Orleans that I could do it and do it easily. I actually had backup shows on two of the nights. This was a huge success.

And one other thing...you can find James Booker music on CD way, way easier in New Orleans than you can find it at home. Or even on the internet. I came home with one to add to my collection.

Next trip: intentional travel on a trip we've been planning for months. Just like always.

Last pics: Stanton Moore drumming (top) and Rockin' Dopsie Jr. and his brother Anthony (on accordion).